The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced two new
media specifications that use Blu-ray Disc technology to
provide targeted functionality for commercial and consumer
applications.
The specifications for BDXL (High Capacity Recordable and
Rewritable discs) and IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid discs) are
expected in the next few months, the BDA said.
The BDXL specification, which is targeted primarily at
commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and
document imaging enterprises with significant archiving
needs, will provide customers with write-once options on
100GB and 128GB capacity discs and rewritable capability on
100GB discs. The discs reach these capacities by
incorporating three to four recordable layers. A consumer
version of BDXL is also expected, particularly in those
regions where BD recorders have achieved broad consumer
acceptance.
"Professional industries have expressed a desire to find
optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away
from magnetic media for their archiving needs," said Victor
Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions
Committee chair. "Leveraging Blu-ray Disc to meet this need
provides professional enterprises with a compact, stable and
long term solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive
data, video and graphic images using a proven and widely
accepted optical technology."
The Intra-Hybrid Blu-ray Disc (IH-BD) incorporates a single
BD-ROM layer and a single BD-RE layer so as to enable the
user to view, but not overwrite, critical published data
while providing the flexibility to include relevant personal
data on the same physical disc. This allows for consumer
specific applications where combining published content with
related user data on a convenient, single volume is
desirable. Both the ROM and the RE layers on IH-BD discs
provide 25GB of capacity.
Because both BDXL and IH-BD are specially designed formats
with specific market segments in mind, newly-designed
hardware is required to play back or record BDXL or IH-BD
media. However, because the new media specifications are
extensions of current Blu-ray Disc technology, future BDXL
and IH-BD devices can be designed to support existing 25GB
and 50GB Blu-ray Discs.